NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Review

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Review

Cryptocurrency mining is one of the most widespread activities in the planet because of its profit-earning potential and the thrill you get when you obtain cryptocurrency, which will later go into your bank account in some way or another.

Not so long ago, cryptocurrency mining, especially Bitcoin mining, was performed on the Central Processing Units (CPU) of personal computers, and it was widely understood that with additional cores and faster speeds, people would get more money. But that system was later substituted, at least in popularity, by multi-graphic card systems that could help miners to find more hashes while optimizing the use of power.

NVIDIA’s newest toy for miners around the world

NVIDIA, an American technology brand, designs and produces graphics processing units, commonly known as GPU, for several fields, including cryptocurrency, gaming, and home use. It has been functioning since 1993. It also works on personal computers, mobile devices, and the automotive industry. NVIDIA is famous worldwide for its GeForce GPU series, which are commonly used for miners in their quest to add transactions to the blockchain and earn monetary rewards.

The GTX 1070 Ti comes to the market as a gaming GPU, although miners, naturally, have taken interest in its features and performance. It is visually attractive, with a colored LED logo and lights. According to some reviews, this card is very similar, if only marginally better, than the AMD RX Vega 64 and less than 10% better than the original GTX 1070 series, although we will talk more about that in a few minutes.

You will need more than your usual share of hardware to adapt your NVIDIA GTX 1070 Ti card: a motherboard such as the ASRock H81 PRO BTC, or the GIGABYTE GA-H110-D3A; an Intel Celeron G1840 for ASRock H81 PRO BTC CPU, or Intel Celeron G3900 for Gigabyte H110-D3A, at least 4 GB of DDR3, a SSD ADATA SU700 120GB, and an Add2PSU Multiple Power Supply Adapter, among other options.

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti is an excellent graphics card for cryptominers all over the world. It has many interesting features, such as 512 more CUDA cores than the GeForce GTX 1070 while still implementing GDDR5 memory.

When mining Ether, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 isn’t as good as the cheaper GeForce GTX 1070, because speed and latency of the memory subsystem are deciding factors, and the latter comes up better in the comparison in spite of the former having GDDR5X.

More affordable than the competition, but not the best price

This new option in the market, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Founders Edition, can be obtained with $449, which isn’t considered terribly expensive if you consider that the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Founders Edition has a price of $399, and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti FE costs $699.

Experiments have shown that the all-new NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti with 432 CUDA Cores and 8GB of GDDR5 memory at 8Gbps is faster for Ethereum mining than, say, the GeForce GTX 1070. However, the margin is awfully small (only 0.2 MH/s), so the additional CUDA cores don’t heavily affect the performance. Let’s remember that both cards have equal bandwidth (256 GB/sec.)

The memory subsystem performance showed that some of the GeForce GTX 1070/1070 Ti cards stayed at 2000 MHz when mining, while others dropped to the 1900 MHz range. The problem seems to be present only for mining because other 3D applications didn’t drop the memory clock. However, manually overclocking the memory to the maximum level will get the best from the card anyway, so you don’t have to worry so much about this little issue.

On an overclocked 1070 Ti card, you will get close to 31 MH/s in performance, which represents roughly a 10% jump in production when compared to the EVGA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti FTW2. With the latter, the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) was at 65C after mining for nearly nine hours in the open air, at approximately 634 RPM.

Both video cards, the EVGA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti FTW2 and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Founders Edition, are very similar in performance and power consumption, but since the former is $50 more expensive than the latter, then the decision is a lot easier for miners.

However, the elite are still the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 series cards. It offers miners some of the best features and performance in the market while costing just $379. With them, you could reach 33 MH/s by overclocking, a number that either the EVGA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti FTW2 and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Founders Edition could reach. In spite of having extra CUDA cores, the 1070 Ti aren’t particularly better for Ethereum miners.

In conclusion, while the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti has many interesting features that set it apart from its peers, evidence still suggests that the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 series cards are better and more suitable for mining Ethereum, because, among many other things, it achieves better performance while using similar amounts of energy and power.

There is no denying that the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti has many positive traits. It has an excellent cooling system, it has mosfets and capacitors that make it durable and stable, it has even further overclock potential, it is silent and convenient for many environments, and is stylish and good-looking. However, it may be better suited for gamers than it is for cryptominers, and can be sold as a card for gamers with no issues. When it is set on factory configuration, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti has a disappointingly low hash rate, and if you take in consideration the price, you can say it is good, but not top-notch.